Correlation coefficients for T-spherical fuzzy sets and their applications in pattern analysis and multi-attribute decision-making

T-spherical fuzzy set is an effective tool to deal with vagueness and uncertainty in real-life problems, especially in a situation when there are more than two circumstances, like in casting a ballot. The correlation coefficient of T-spherical fuzzy sets is a tool to calculate the association of two T-spherical fuzzy sets. It has several applications in various disciplines like science, management, and engineering. The noticeable applications incorporate pattern analysis, decision-making, medical diagnosis, and clustering. The aim of this article is to introduce some correlation coefficients for T-spherical fuzzy sets with their applications in pattern recognition and decision-making. The under discussion correlation coefficients are far more advantageous than the existing and many other tools used for T-spherical fuzzy sets, because they are used completely and demonstrate the nature as well as the limit of association between two T-spherical fuzzy sets. Further, an application of proposed correlation coefficients in pattern analysis is discussed here. In addition to it, the proposed correlation coefficients are applied to a multi-attribute decision-making problem, in which the selection of a suitable COVID-19 mask is presented. A comparative analysis has also been made to check the effectiveness of the proposed work with the existing correlation coefficients.

Based on T-spherical fuzzy environment: A combination of FWZIC and FDOSM for prioritising COVID-19 vaccine dose recipients.

The problem complexity of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) has been raised in the distribution of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines, which required solid and robust MCDM methods. Compared with other MCDM methods, the fuzzy-weighted zero-inconsistency (FWZIC) method and fuzzy decision by opinion score method (FDOSM) have demonstrated their solidity in solving different MCDM challenges. However, the fuzzy sets used in these methods have neglected the refusal concept and limited the restrictions on their constants. To end this, considering the advantage of the T-spherical fuzzy sets (T-SFSs) in handling the uncertainty in the data and obtaining information with more degree of freedom, this study has extended FWZIC and FDOSM methods into the T-SFSs environment (called T-SFWZIC and T-SFDOSM) to be used in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. The methodology was formulated on the basis of decision matrix adoption and development phases. The first phase described the adopted decision matrix used in the COVID-19 vaccine distribution. The second phase presented the sequential formulation steps of T-SFWZIC used for weighting the distribution criteria followed by T-SFDOSM utilised for prioritising the vaccine recipients. Results revealed the following: (1) T-SFWZIC effectively weighted the vaccine distribution criteria based on several parameters including T = 2, T = 4, T = 6, T = 8, and T = 10. Amongst all parameters, the age criterion received the highest weight, whereas the geographic locations severity criterion has the lowest weight. (2) According to the T parameters, a considerable variance has occurred on the vaccine recipient orders, indicating that the existence of T values affected the vaccine distribution. (3) In the individual context of T-SFDOSM, no unique prioritisation was observed based on the obtained opinions of each expert. (4) The group context of T-SFDOSM used in the prioritisation of vaccine recipients was considered the final distribution result as it unified the differences found in an individual context. The evaluation was performed based on systematic ranking assessment and sensitivity analysis. This evaluation showed that the prioritisation results based on each T parameter were subject to a systematic ranking that is supported by high correlation results over all discussed scenarios of changing criteria weights values.